Understanding the Checkout Process in CircleCI: What Happens When You Push Your Code?

Discover how CircleCI handles your code during the checkout process. Learn about branch management when pushing updates in GitHub with this in-depth explanation.
---
This video is based on the question https://stackoverflow.com/q/63557585/ asked by the user 'figalo66' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/12483876/ ) and on the answer https://stackoverflow.com/a/63587036/ provided by the user 'FelicianoTech' ( https://stackoverflow.com/u/1195276/ ) at 'Stack Overflow' website. Thanks to these great users and Stackexchange community for their contributions.

Visit these links for original content and any more details, such as alternate solutions, latest updates/developments on topic, comments, revision history etc. For example, the original title of the Question was: What is the checkout of Circle Ci doing?

Also, Content (except music) licensed under CC BY-SA https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/l...
The original Question post is licensed under the 'CC BY-SA 4.0' ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... ) license, and the original Answer post is licensed under the 'CC BY-SA 4.0' ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/... ) license.

If anything seems off to you, please feel free to write me at vlogize [AT] gmail [DOT] com.
---
Understanding the Checkout Process in CircleCI: What Happens When You Push Your Code?

When working with continuous integration tools like CircleCI, it's important to understand how it manages your code when you push updates. A common question for developers is: What is the checkout of CircleCI doing? This guide will clarify how CircleCI interacts with your branches, especially when you push to your master branch compared to your develop branch, and what that means for your workflow.

The Basics of CircleCI and Git Branches

In a typical Git workflow, developers often maintain multiple branches, each serving different purposes. In this case, you have:

Master Branch: Represents your production-ready code.

Develop Branch: Used for integrating features and testing before they are merged into master.

When you push updates to either of these branches on GitHub, CircleCI automatically recognizes this action and triggers a build in its CI/CD pipeline.

What Happens When You Push to Master?

Building the HEAD of Your Branch

When you execute a command like:

[[See Video to Reveal this Text or Code Snippet]]

Here’s what goes down in CircleCI:

Branch Detection: CircleCI detects that you've pushed updates to the master branch.

Building Process: It then builds what's known as the HEAD of that branch, meaning it focuses on the most recent commit that has been pushed to master.

Other Branches Are Irrelevant: During this process, any differences in the develop branch or other branches do not affect the build. CircleCI only cares about the branch you have just updated.

The Role of the Checkout Step

CircleCI includes a crucial step in its pipeline: the checkout step. Here’s how it works:

Git Cloning: CircleCI starts by cloning your repository from GitHub into the build environment.

Checking Out the Commit: It then checks out the specific commit of the master branch that you just pushed. This is the version of your code that CircleCI will use for the build and other subsequent steps.

The Develop Branch: What Happens to It?

You might be wondering: Does the develop branch do nothing when I push to master? The answer is yes — at least during that particular build process.

The develop branch is not built or impacted when you push to master. This is standard behavior because CircleCI is designed to build the specific branch that receives the update.

Any ongoing work or commits on the develop branch will remain intact and will not trigger any action in CircleCI unless they are pushed to the develop branch itself.

Key Takeaways

When you push to master, CircleCI specifically builds the latest commit of that branch only.

The checkout step involves cloning the repository and checking out the commit you've just pushed.

Your develop branch remains untouched and inactive during this process unless you perform a push to it.

By understanding these key actions that occur in CircleCI when pushing changes, you can better manage your development workflow and utilize all the features of this powerful CI/CD tool efficiently.

Now you’re equipped to handle your code pushes with confidence! If you have any more questions or need further clarification on CircleCI or any of its processes, feel free to reach out!